Memoirs of Mr. Henry Masers de Latude, containing an account of his confinement thirty-five years in the state prisons of France, and of the stratagems he adopted to escape, once from the Bastille, and twice from the Castle of Vincennes, with the sequel of those adventures
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- Memoirs of Mr. Henry Masers de Latude, containing an account of his confinement thirty-five years in the state prisons of France, and of the stratagems he adopted to escape, once from the Bastille, and twice from the Castle of Vincennes, with the sequel of those adventures translation has paratext
Summary (extracted citations)
The epigraph on the title page reads: "coelum carte patet, ibimus illac. Omnia poffideat, non poffidet aëra Minos" Ovid.
Notes
Translator dedicates his work to an English MP who has shown his constant attachment to the constitution, which is the best defense against the kind of arbitrary sentences presented by the lettres de cachet.
In the preface, the translator goes on to explain that France is a country without liberty, as proven by the existence of the lettres de cachet. Such are the horrors of arbitrary government. The English should take extra pride in their free constitution from reading Latude's memoirs.
The tone of this translator's preface is remarkably different from the one published in a second translation of the same text which appeared simultaneously.
This edition also features an epigraph (which does not appear in the original Amsterdam edition) taken from book VIII of Ovid's Metamorphoses. It loosely translates as "If Minos, says he, beset Land and Sea, yet still the Fields of Air are open". For this translation see A New Translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses into English prose, page 285, https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=STlWAAAAcAAJ&pg=PR6#v=onepage&q&f=false.